This game was continued for more than half-an-hour, at the end of which time the two men got behind a thick holly bush near by, and began to consult together.
The next moment the boys would have been free, for while the keepers were thus engaged, their prisoners were preparing to slide down the tree and make a dash for it, when, observing this, the men rushed towards the tree just in time to prevent them.
"Come back, Jamie! Come back----" cried his companion, hurling at the same instant another piece of wood at Beagle, who made a desperate spring, and tried to catch hold of Jamie's legs, as he hung dangling from a branch. The missile took effect, and the constable quickly retreated, roaring like the "Bull of Bashan."
The next moment Old Click emerged from the wood with an armful of bracken, with which he quickly kindled a fire. Soon a thick column of smoke arose, and drifted towards the tree. More and more bracken and brushwood were piled on, and the smoke became chokingly dense up there in the tree, for the fire had been lit with the express purpose of smoking them out.
The boys plied them valiantly with wood-chunks and wicken-berries, but their ammunition soon failed them. The smoke had become dreadful now. They were nearly choked with it, and were already half-blinded. What could they do? Still they held out. They mounted to the very top of the tree, and sat there with their faces buried in their hands to keep that suffocating smoke from their eyes and nostrils.
"Coming down now, sir?" asked the keeper, who had now begun to light another fire at the root of the tree, for he saw that there was no more ammunition aloft, but he had counted without his host.
"No, you villains! Take that!--and that!" shouted Jack, at the same time hurling down through the smoke first one boot and then another, as a last resort.
The second boot caught Old Click in the middle of the back as he was stooping down to tend the fire, and made him give vent to a yell which resounded through the woods. This incident evoked a bit of high-sounding English that I will not here repeat--suffice it to say that the yell brought Beagle, who had gone to fetch a woodman's axe, running to the spot to see what had happened.
The keeper sat down on the grass for a few moments, and the boys were afraid that they had killed him, but in a little while he sprang up again and cried out angrily--
"I'll give you two minutes to come down, gentlemen. At the end of that time I shall cut down the tree."